1. Technical Field
Example aspects described herein relate to medical image processing, and, in particular, relate to a procedure, apparatus, system, and computer program, for facilitating interactive pre-operative assessments using manipulative, visually perceptible models of anatomical structures.
2. Description of Related Art
Liver tumor resection can be an efficient treatment method for addressing liver cancer. Before surgery, physicians need to carefully evaluate a hepatic lesion or tumor to be re-sectioned, the volume of the expected remaining liver segments, how a proposed resection is going to affect nearby vascular structures and corresponding blood supply/drainage regions, and how the resection will affect biliary systems, for example. Such comprehensive assessments can be helpful in determining an optimal operative plan.
Whether or not a resection will be suitable for a particular patient can depend on a number of factors, such as, for example, the location of a tumor, its size, and the quality of expected post-operative liver function. Pre-surgical planning is therefore important. During the planning stage, a surgeon has to understand the spatial relationships between tumors and surrounding vessel structures. To enable a surgeon to do so, tools and systems that are capable of assisting and enabling the surgeon to define a surface that separates tumors and corresponding diseased tissue from the rest of healthy liver tissue, are needed, as are tools for measuring the size and/or volume of the affected areas and/or distances between the affected areas and nearby structures. It has been a challenge in the past to provide tools having such capabilities, and which can be operated intuitively and in a user work-flow-friendly manner. As is commonly known, ease-of-use is an important factor in terms of whether a physician can effectively evaluate different scenarios to determine a best resection procedure based on various information from different sources.
Traditional, available commercial products in this area are mostly based primarily on 2D display technology that provides a user with a view having axial slices. The user can operate a user interface to scroll up and down within the display to view different structures in a sliced arrangement along an axial direction. Such conventional products also provide drawing tools that enable a user to draw separating curves in different slices. A corresponding 3D separating surface can then be interpolated computationally based on multiple curves drawn in different slices, but is not visible. With such a generated separating surface, the volume of the underlying target object or a virtual resection within the confines of the separating surface can be calculated. Because such a separating surface is not visible, the user is required to imagine in his/her mind, while making the 2D drawings, the possible outcome in 3D space. Thus the conventional 2D approach is not intuitive and is difficult to apply.
Bernard Retinger, et al. “Liver Surgery Planning using Virtual Reality,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Application, November/December 2006] refers to a virtual reality environment that purportedly enables a user to perform some 3D operations directly in a 3D virtual reality space. However, the environment requires users to wear stereo goggles and to use special 3D tracking devices which are not generally available.